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Quick Start

Americon Bid Portal

Quick start

For project managers and coordinators

Ten minutes on what the portal is for, what has changed, and the order to do things in. Every panel points at the full manual, which answers everything this does not.

What the portal does

Five jobs that used to be spread across an Outlook folder, a spreadsheet and somebody's memory. They now happen in one place, against one project.

Publishes the job

Bid date, location, trades and drawings. Public projects appear on the bid calendar for any contractor to find. Private ones appear nowhere and open only from an invite link.

Visibility

Sends the invitations

Pick contacts, groups or a whole trade from the shared directory. See who is excluded and why before anything sends. Each firm gets its own link.

Choosing who to invite

Hands out the drawings

Plan files are served through an access check, not from a public folder. Contractors identify themselves as they take them — which is what makes it possible to tell them about an addendum later.

Who has taken the plans

Takes the answers back

A contractor replies to the invitation from their own email. The reply files itself against the job, both of you are told, and anything attached is stored with it — no forwarding, and no account for them to sign into.

How a reply reaches the job

Keeps the record

Who was asked, when, whether it was delivered, whether it was opened, whether they said they are bidding, and what they sent. Exportable as a spreadsheet.

Who has been invited

Project Manager and Project Coordinator hold identical permissions. The distinction is who is responsible for the job, not what the software will let you press.

The Calendar Dashboard: a row of counting tiles reading Closing today, Closing this week, Open public bids, Open private bids, Contractors not told, Unpublished drafts and Waiting for an answer, above a month grid with two bid deadlines marked on it.
Where you land after signing in. The tiles answer "what needs me today"; the grid answers "how does next month look". Every tile is a link into the list it counted.

What has changed

The portal replaces a process that worked, but could not be evidenced. Most of what follows is about the second half of that sentence.

The bidder list lived in whichever Outlook profile the sending manager used. It was private to one person, and it left when they did.
One shared directory. A correction you make is a correction everyone gets, on every job, from that moment.What the directory is for
One email, everybody on it.
Each firm gets its own link, so an opened invitation can be attributed to a company rather than to nobody.The contractor invite email
"Did they get it?" — no way to know.
A delivery outcome per firm, from the mail server. Addresses that stop working are set aside automatically.Proving an invitation was sent
Plan holders tracked by hand, if at all.
Built automatically as contractors take the drawings.Who has taken the plans
Addendum issued — ring round, and hope the list was right.
Notify every plan holder at once, message already written. The dashboard counts firms who have not been told.Notify these plan holders
A revised sheet looked exactly like the old one.
A revision label sits beside the file, so a contractor holding an older set can see theirs is stale.File versions and revision labels
"Who did we invite to this job?", three months later — nobody could answer.
An exportable record: asked, delivered, opened, took the plans, bidding or not.The solicitation record, as a file
A lost invite link meant a phone call, usually at 3pm on the due date.
The contractor gets it back themselves, without anybody here being at their desk.When a contractor loses their invite link
A contractor's question arrived in whichever inbox they happened to write to, and the answer left from there. Nobody else on the job saw either.
They reply to the invitation. It lands on the job under Correspondence, you and the other name on the project are both emailed, and Reply answers it in the same thread — on the record.The Correspondence panel
Bids came to the project manager's own mailbox, so the record stopped at what a firm said three weeks earlier.
A firm presses Send your bid in their invitation and it arrives against the job with its documents, under Offers received — separately from their questions, which go in the queue with the deadline on it. Before the bid date only the two people assigned to the job can open a bid, and every open is logged.Offers received
The bid tab was a spreadsheet rebuilt by hand for every job, and the losing bidders heard nothing.
Every bid on the job in one table, grouped by trade, with what does not add up marked beside each number. Firms can state their own figure and scope answers from the project page. One press awards; a second tells the winner and thanks everyone else.Comparing bids side by side

The one rule

Send invitations from the portal, not from Outlook.

An invitation composed in Outlook carries no per-firm link, honours no unsubscribe, checks nobody against the bounce list, and leaves the project unable to say the firm was ever asked. That last one is the record you need if a job is reviewed for good-faith solicitation — which is why the panel no longer offers a way to copy the invitation out.

For a private word with one firm, use Message on that firm's row — or Reply on something they have written, which answers in the same thread. Both go from the portal, so both are on the record too.

What the portal can prove afterwards

Your first project

The whole path, in the order you will walk it.

  1. Create the draft. Name, city and state, bid due date, and the two people responsible. Everything else can wait. Choose Public or Private here.

    How the form is organised

  2. Fill in the editor. The rail down the left is the whole project. Each entry shows its own summary, so you can see what is still empty without opening it.

    The section rail

  3. Upload the drawings. Give each one a revision label matching its title block. This is the most consequential field on the screen.

    File versions and revision labels

  4. Publish. Until you do, the project is off the calendar, sends no reminders, and its plan files will not download.

    Drafts and publishing

  5. Invite. Choose who to invite, read the review step, send a test to yourself first, then send. If the screen says invitations cannot go out yet, nothing is wrong with your project — the bid mailbox has not been read yet, and an administrator clears that in one press.

    The review step

  6. Watch the plan holders. Contractors who take the drawings appear on the project. That list is who you notify when a drawing is revised or the date moves.

    Who has taken the plans

  7. Answer what comes back. Replies appear in the editor's Mail section and on the invitation record, and you are emailed when one arrives. Say what each was — Bid or Question — and answer the questions with Reply, which records the answer for you; Acknowledge is for the ones you rang about. A question answered after the job closes is a question that was not answered.

    The Correspondence panel

  8. Compare, then award. After the bid date, open Compare these bids side by side from the Offers panel. Every bid on the job in one table, by trade, lowest first; type or confirm each figure, level the ones that priced different things, then press Award on the winning row and let the portal tell the bidders.

    Comparing bids side by side

Steps 4 and 5 are in that order for a reason. An invitation sent from an unpublished draft arrives with links that lead nowhere.

Step 7 does not wait for the others to finish. Questions start arriving the afternoon the invitations go out, and the ones worth answering come in before a firm has decided whether to bid at all.

The project editor, showing a draft banner across the top with a Publish button, and a section rail listing Overview, Schedule, Contacts, Photo, Plan files, Invite email and Delete, each with a summary of its contents.
The editor on a draft. The rail summaries — Contacts 2 named, Plan files 0 files — mean you can see what is missing without opening anything.

Reading the screen

The labels that carry the most meaning, and what each one is telling you.

DRAFT

Written up, never published. Off the calendar, sends nothing, and its plan files will not download.

PUBLIC

On the bid calendar. Any contractor can find it without an invitation.

PRIVATE

Off every public surface. Reachable only through its invite link.

No plan holders

Nobody has taken the drawings. On a job with a bid date approaching, this is the one to act on.

Contractors not told

A dashboard tile. The plans or the bid date changed after invitations went out, and these firms have not heard.

in 21 hours

How long is left, in the words you would use out loud. Amber inside a week, red on the day.

Question

Something a contractor wrote that you marked as a question. It stays listed as waiting until somebody replies from the portal or presses Acknowledge.

still arriving

The portal knows a message had documents on it and has not been back for them yet. Usually a minute or two, not a reason to go looking in a mailbox.

A project list. A filter bar with search, state and per-page controls sits above rows of quick-filter chips showing counts, then a toolbar with Copy link to this view, Export and a Comfortable or Compact switch, then the table of projects with DRAFT and No plan holders badges against each row.
The badges in place. The quick-filter chips carry their own counts, so you can see whether a filter is worth pressing before you press it.

Where to go from here

The full manual

Every control on the site, explained. Section 2 is written for your two roles. Open Help on the portal, or the copy you were sent with this.

The ? buttons

Beside any control worth explaining. Press one for a short answer, with a link into the manual entry.

A private draft

The fastest way to get comfortable. Make one, send yourself a test invitation, and press everything. A draft is invisible outside Americon until you publish it, so there is nothing to break.